CHARLES CARROLL EVERETT. 551 



pretation, on broad philosophic principles, of that which Christianity has 

 to contribute to the solution i)f the universal religious problem. Chris- 

 tianity could be accepted only as it commended itself to the fundamental 

 needs of the human soul. First, then, it must be shown what these 

 needs are, and this Dr. Everett undertook to do in his introductory lec- 

 tures on the Psychological Basis of Religious Faith. Upon this basis 

 he then developed his presentation of Christian ideas as rationally cor- 

 responding to a universal and fundamental demand. These lectures were 

 his real life-work. They furnished the intellectual nucleus about which 

 he gathered the results of his ever ripening thouglit and his ever wider 

 readincr. It is they that have given him his peculiar hold upon a full gen- 

 eration of students, and it is they that will form, if their substance can be 

 restored from the scattered material available, the most complete recoi'd 

 of his intellectual life. 



Dr. Everett was not a voluminous writer. His best work was done 

 in response to some outward occasion which roused him to formulate his 

 thought upon some given problem. Probably the book most likely to 

 be remembered outside of strictly academic circles is the volume of 

 essays on Poetry, Comedy, and Duty, published in 1891, in which his 

 profound reflection, his wide learning, and his playful fancy found equal 

 scope. His " Gospel of Paul," in 1893, was an altogether original treat- 

 ment of the Pauline theology, and was, perhaps, the work of his later 

 years which appealed most strongly to himself. Plis contributions to the 

 " New World." of which he was one of the responsible editors, were 

 numerous and important. 



In losing him the University and the world of scholarship have lost a 

 unique figure, an interpreter of truth in a transition age, a guide to all 

 those who were seeking light in the confusion of faiths and in the 

 temptations of doubt. His value as a scholar is to be measured only 

 by his singular quality as a man. After all it was his personality that 

 impressed, and charmed, and made the way clear for the truth he had to 

 convey. He satisfied the inquirer, not by the cheap method of com- 

 promise, but by a subtle gift of leading men away from the unessentials 

 to the realities of faith. His mind had that element of greatness which 

 consists in the ability to see tlirough the mists of the unimportant and 

 the transient down to the permanent and the essential in the religious 

 life, and not only to see this but to make it clear to others. One of his 

 greatest aids in exposition was his ever-present sense of humor. If, as 

 he has taught us, the essence of the comic is to be found in the sense of 

 incongruity, it should follow that the truly humorous mind is keen also 



